A Clash of Blades set in the Bakumatsu - Rise of the Ronin Review

Preface

Aight, so.

Look, I know I’m really really really late. It’s been a long time since PC release depending on when I finally get off my ass and actually finish this script. But I really like the game okay, so I need to talk about it. Considering what time it is when I’m writing this, I dragged my feet so long I actually have the Nioh 3 video cooking already.

Anyways, Rise of the Ronin came out on the same day as Dragon’s Dogma 2, and I, being a huge fan of Dragon’s Dogma, actually made the decision to go for Dragon’s Dogma 2 instead. If you’ve read my review you’ll realize that Dragon’s Dogma 2 did not meet my expectations and honestly was extremely disappointing on many fronts despite the parts I did like. I didn’t want to spend an hour just shitting on a game, even if it wasted a lot of potential that I genuinely wish it utilized. Let’s just move on.

Introduction

So what’s Rise of the Ronin? Honestly there’s a lot of ways to describe it. I think the one that most people I know go by these days is that it’s Team Ninja Ghost of Tsushima, in the same way that Nioh was Team Ninja Dark Souls. I honestly think that’s a pretty appropriate comparison, since you can really tell that a lot of this game was inspired by Ghost of Tsushima. However, as you may expect from Team Ninja, the focus of the game is massively on the combat, and not so much on the beauty, or the story or the world.

Let’s start with an issue I heard a lot about on PC release. The performance in Rise of the Ronin was really bad for many players. Not sure how different it is now since I’ve always had a pretty beefy rig, but I heard it’s gotten better than when it started off. I would strongly suggest looking around for performance benchmarks and whatnot so that you know if your PC can handle it. Even though I really like this game, if it doesn’t run for your setup, then I cannot recommend this game to you.

An added point against the game here is one of my friends also has a pretty beefy rig too, but runs into an issue where the game just has an error pop up that closes the game when confirmed. However, he can play the game if he ignores the message, so I’m really not sure what the issue is.

The difficulties available are Dawn which is equivalent to easy, Dusk which is equivalent to normal, and Twilight which is equivalent to hard. Midnight difficulty is the NG+ difficulty, which only unlocks once you finish the story. My first playthrough was on Twilight, so I wanted to see how accessible the game actually was on an easier difficulty, and it definitely feels way more accessible. I will note, that if you plan on playing the game past the first playthrough at all, it may be best to build up your skills through playing on Twilight difficulty instead of Dusk or Dawn, since Midnight is noticeably harder than Twilight, and jumping from Dawn or Dusk to Midnight might be too big of a difficulty gap to close enjoyably.

Since the game’s NG+, Midnight difficulty, doesn’t really function as a NG+ in terms of story, I opted to record the early segments of this game in the Dusk difficulty, which is the middle one. Some story missions were played in Midnight on my maxed out save so that I could show off some cool combos and how I preferred to play.

Story and Presentation

Rise of the Ronin itself is a game set in the Bakumatsu era, starting when Japan opened its borders to the world. Your character and their Blade Twin are two children whose village was slaughtered by the Shogunate, and raised as agents to fight against them by your teacher, the Bladesmith. You are sent to gather intel on Matthew Perry, the man who forced Japan to open up, and assassinate him if possible. This assassination attempt is thwarted by a ninja known as the Blue Demon, and your Blade Twin is grievously injured securing your escape.

After returning with the intel, your character cannot shake off the feeling that your Blade Twin is alive and decides to set out to look for them. This causes you to be branded a traitor to your clan, but you decide to leave regardless. This journey leads you to Yokohama, where you end up meeting Sakamoto Ryouma, who helps connect you with people who can help you in your search. After chasing a lead, you do find your Blade Twin alive, but seemingly on the opposite side of the battle, and unwilling to explain their actions. The story follows the major beats of this period in history quite closely, and you get to experience a lot of major events in it.

Let’s be clear, the real main character of the story and era is Sakamoto Ryouma. You actually end up meeting many of the major figures in the era and work with or against them based on your decisions. While your character does have their own story, with many decisions you make, the decisions don’t actually impact history and the overall story by a lot, with the biggest impacts being some characters surviving a bit longer than they did in history.

Just a quick side note before I move on, I got invested in the time period specifically because I grew up with a lot of media surrounding this era. If you’re a fan of Rurouni Kenshin, you’ll recognize some of the characters too, since it’s set during Kenshin’s Hitokiri Battousai period. The game actually includes the historical figure who inspired Rurouni Kenshin, so it’s really cool to see. If you’re a fan of Gintama you’ll also recognize a lot of these characters, since most of the Shinsengumi is included, though it’s much more serious here than there.

I think that overall, this is probably my favorite Team Ninja story. I realize that’s not a very high bar, but of the Team Ninja games I’ve played, I think this one is the one that has the most coherent story, and characters I actually connected with. The characters introduced later do suffer from a shorter screentime so it’s harder to connect to them compared to the early characters, but I respect that that was always going to be an issue considering the time period.

Speaking of the time period though, Rise of the Ronin covers a period of 13 years, though when you’re actually playing through it doesn’t feel anywhere near that long, especially since the characters stay looking the same throughout. This isn’t a major thing, but it can explain why people seem so attached to you so quickly by the end of the first act, since by that point you’ve been working with them for something like 8 years.

Visual and Sound

So, let’s move on to the visuals of the game. As much as I do like the game, the game isn’t modern by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t think it’s quite like a previous gen level of datedness like many people say online, but it’s definitely not the current gen standard of fidelity. That said, I do like the art direction a lot.

The visuals and design of the area feels quite grounded and not idealized. This is quite a contrast for me with Ghost of Tsushima, wherein if you stop to take a picture of the view, nine times out of ten you’ll probably be able to use it as a screenshot. Here, the landscape screenshots can feel nice, and the cities too. However, there’s nothing here that looks even remotely as pretty as Ghost of Tsushima was.

In terms of sound, I think the sound effects and music were both fine. I don’t really have much to say because it didn’t really stand out to me too much. The counterspark sound was really satisfying, which is good because it’s the main combat mechanic of the game. The telegraphing for enemies is generally pretty good visually and audibly, though it can be inconsistent between attacks of similar types, leading to some misreads.

Before we move onto gameplay, let’s talk about customization, cause there’s a lot you can do. Character customization is actually quite deep, with more options than Nioh. I just made my usual avatar, but I’ve seen a lot of people do some really cool takes on characters from other games. The character you play is enough of a blank slate that you can project yourself into the character without feeling like it’s not really you. The most fun part of character customization to me though is the transmog they introduced in this game and kept for Nioh 3. Once you get access to a home in the story, you can set a look for both weapons and armor for your character that will remain that way regardless of what you equip. This game specifically allowed us to use different layers of clothes, armor, outerwear, innerwear, gloves, and hands. This means that the level of mix and match you have access to is significant, and while Nioh 3 adopts the overall system, it doesn’t quite have the same amount of customizability. I hope that this system will return someday, since I genuinely had a ton of fun just fashioning.

Gameplay

So it’s time for our prolonged gameplay segments again.

Since this is a Team Ninja game, let’s start with the combat and go from there. The basic combat is quite straightforward, you have access to attacking, blocking, and dodging similarly to other similar games. The unique mechanic in this game is that you also have a heavy attack called a counterspark that works as a parry, instead of parry being bound to timed blocks. The counterspark actually fills in quite a few roles, being both a parry and an attack. You can cancel most attacks into a counterspark so you can stay on the offense and immediately defend if you need to, though if you start a counterspark early, you cannot counterspark again during its own animation so it’s extremely punishing if you mistime it. You can also use it to extend your combos if the enemy is being pressured, since it actually does a decent amount of damage, and if you accidentally mistime the counterspark you might actually hit the enemy with the swing and stagger them out of their attack as well.

You also have access to a mechanic called Blade Flash, which is similar to Ki Pulse in Nioh. In here though, instead of timing it to regain stamina back, you regain stamina back based on the amount of damage you’ve done since the last Blade Flash, up to a cap. This allows you to keep pressuring your opponent while keeping yourself safe from getting exhausted since exhaustion in this game, like with Nioh, is a stun that can have lethal consequences.

Other than that, you also have a grappling hook which is quite cool. You use it for traversal of course, but during combat you can pull enemies to you or pull yourself to enemies based on the situation at hand. If your enemy is on a roof, you may want to pull them down and finish them off, but if you’re surrounded on the ground by other enemies it may be better to pull yourself to the enemy on the roof so that you can create some space while still removing the ranged threat.

You also have multiple options for ranged attacks, with the main types being sidearms and focused ranged weapons. Sidearms are quick use stuff that you can throw out mid fight to interrupt or create space, like a shuriken or a pistol. Focused ranged weapons on the other hand let you snipe out enemies before the fight even starts, and with how dumb the AI can be for noticing things, it’s actually kind of really strong. We also get access to a flamethrower I guess, but other than the intro segment I never really utilized it. It’s there if you want it though.

Stealth also exists in this game. It’s really strong, you can really delete most of a camp (or weaken an elite enemy!) before engaging in combat, though I think personally I like the combat too much to actually use it a lot. It’s good, stealth is strong, the assassinations are fast and snappy, but honestly combat is just too fun to reduce how much of it there is. My only real complaint is that because it’s fast and snappy, the animations can feel too sudden and unsatisfying.

Now for the biggest draw in this game’s combat system for me, the Styles and Weapons. There are nine weapon types with each having multiple combat styles to utilize during combat. This actually feels like an understatement of the amount of options we have during combat, as we can equip two weapons and 3 stances for each weapon, giving us six whole different movesets in total at most times.

And when I say different movesets, I genuinely do mean it. The normal attack strings, lunging attacks, charge attacks, and countersparks are all unique to each stance, with counterspark animation and parry timing actually differing based on the animation too. Each style also has 3 martial skills that can be used, and a fourth slot that allows you to use a martial skill from a different style. This really allows you to create your own personal style that works best for you, and the length of combos that you can create can get pretty crazy.

That said, if you prefer to stick to a few styles and swap based on advantages, you can do so viably as that’s what I did mainly. Each style has a Type designation of Ten, Chi, Jin or Shinobi. Ten styles have an advantage against normal weapons such as katanas. Chi styles have an advantage against heavy weapons such as odachi and spear. Jin styles have an advantage against light weapons such as sabres. When you counterspark attacks from these weapons with the advantaged style, the enemies will stagger and panic for longer, allowing you to combo for a bit longer before you have to go back to defending. Shinobi styles are actually unique in that they are disadvantaged against all types, but their countersparks also get the advantage against all types as well. The advantage is a noticeable boost, but minor enough that if you like another stance and only want to use that stance the whole playthrough, it’s quite doable.

A thing I realized I missed while I was editing the video is the leveling mechanic. There are skill trees for each stat, and doing different activities on the map will provide you with skill points to use on the different trees. Unlocking things is generally pretty easy, and many of them can be playstyle changing. Leveling these skills give you stat points based on the number of things unlocked in the trees, and each weapon scales off of different stats.

ANOTHER ADDITION to this list of things I forgot, is the gear game. You’ll be getting a lot of loot drops. Like a lot lot. That said, it’s honestly not too important until you get further in the game or in Midnight difficulty, with set bonuses being the main thing to pay attention to. There are also stat bonuses rolled on to the weapon, but honestly you don’t need to deal with that since you can reforge the stat to what you want, though it is quite expensive. If you’re going into Midnight difficulty it will matter, but until then I would not really engage with it since the differences are quite small and it can be more busy work than actual fun number crunching.

In terms of enemy design, I think that Rise of the Ronin does an absolutely fantastic job. The number of normal enemy types is quite big, and the game features a lot of unique bosses, as well as variants of those bosses. I also really appreciate that most of the ones that are human sized use attacks that you actually have access to and do combos that you can actually string together. Though, sometimes they cheat a bit and do attacks out of order from your combos. There are some bosses that fight similarly due to sharing styles with each other, but each have their own spin on how they use those moves, as well as incorporating moves from other styles they know. Some also will swap weapons mid-fight to react to you swapping styles to try to keep their advantage, and this is something even generic enemies will start doing in NG+. If you fight the same boss multiple times in the story, they’ll also learn new moves and weapons just as you do too. I think it’s actually really fantastic, because the moment to moment combat is so dynamic.

Let’s quickly cover the open world before we finish up. Some of you might know, but I’m not actually a big fan of open world in games since a lot of the time it introduces bloat and leads to a lot of copy pasting from the extra volume that developers have to do to fill out the world. Rise of the Ronin actually has 3 open world areas, which are not connected to each other. I actually don’t mind the open worlds here for what they are, though there are issues here obviously. For one, I think that there is a lot of busywork that just doesn’t feel necessary. Going to pray at shrines and finding lost cats for people is not what I’m playing Rise of the Ronin for. That said, both have tangible gameplay positives, so I engaged in enough to get what I wanted then stopped doing it.

Traversal in these open worlds is quite simple. We have access to a horse after the first village we visit, which shortens the amount of time you spend walking by a lot. You can buy superior horses and equip it with better tacks for different bonuses, but honestly it’s not a big difference. We also can glide from high places and that is actually pretty cool. With upgrades the gliding can get really fast, though initially it’s quite slow and just helps get over walls and such. One thing of note is that for players like me, we actually have an auto pathing thing for horses. If you want to get to a place on the map that you cannot fast travel to, but you don’t want to walk or slowly ride there, you can just auto-path to it on your horse. For the most part it works fine, though I’ve noticed since the port to PC, that the pathfinding breaks a lot more often than on the PS5 release. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but that’s what I’ve noticed.

There’s a few minigames that you can partake in in the open world as well, which includes shooting, gliding and horseback shooting. They’re fun, give pretty good rewards, and don’t get boring as it’s quite easy to get all the rewards within a few tries.

There will also be areas that are the equivalent of enemy camps on the map called Public Disturbance. They’re fun to do, if you’re underleveled it can get quite difficult, but if you’re appropriately leveled then it’s quick and easy. You just basically kill all the enemies there, sometimes elite and named bounty targets are there. Midnight difficulty replaces an elite from each camp with a named boss, so there’s a bit more variety in each camp, at the cost of making no story sense for them to be there. One thing I’ve noticed later in the game, and I’ve only noticed this in the final parts of NG and in NG+, is that sometimes camps that you’ve already cleared will be repopulated by another player’s character. This is really cool cause you end up having to fight them to clear it back again.

Speaking of other players though, while there’s no time where a player will be controlling their character outside of co-op missions, you will sometimes see other players’ characters wandering around in your world, or tied up in camps. If you see them in the world and beat them up, you can get their loot. If you see them at camps, you can free them and get help during the camp. It’s a really cool way to implement other player characters in a way that’s not intrusive to the immersion. I will say though, fighting them is a bit hit or miss, because unlike the normal enemies you fight, they will actually use the styles and timings that the player character has, which means faster wind ups, stopping in the middle of combos and throwing out another attack, as well as countersparking you back.

There are also unmarked hidden bosses in each map that give you some cool stuff, I think they’re cool as hell though I didn’t even realize they were a thing before I looked it up. I don’t have footage on these bosses, since my new save isn’t strong enough to fight them without extreme struggle, and my maxed save already cleared them all. An additional note is if you got the game early, you would have some of these things already though, so it might not be as rewarding for you as it is for someone who doesn’t have those bonuses.

To finish off the segment, there are gambling dens and dojos in each open world. The gambling dens are fine, you go in, play a minigame and can get money. It’s not super interesting but you can get some really good rewards if you win big. I just save scummed until I got really rich and got the rewards that way, I really don’t care for it.

And then there’s dojos. This is probably my favorite thing in the game. The way it works is that the dojo is essentially a boss rematch mode, but instead of just bosses you can also fight allies that you may have not had to fight in the story. The dojo also removes all of yours and the boss’s stat bonuses so it feels like you’re actually fighting them on relatively even ground. I say relatively because they still operate on the normal games’ rules, which have you and the enemy on different standings, and you have healing potions while they don’t. I have gotten the master rating on every duel in the game, and I am happy to say that I love fighting in this game.

Conclusion

So yeah, I like the game a lot. The combat’s great, there’s a huge amount of variety on both your and the enemies you fight. As someone who grew up with some of the characters in the story in other media, it was really fascinating to learn about the characters I didn’t know, and gave me a starting point to go read about their actual histories. Also the dojo is awesome, I don’t think I’ve said that enough yet. The dojo is amazing.

I would definitely recommend this game for anyone who likes fast paced dueling combat focused on parrying. This game is very fast, whether that means you die or they die quickly. I would also recommend this game for anyone who likes the history associated with the Bakumatsu since this covers the time period and does it decently. It’s not super accurate to history, but it captures the main beats well enough. I would also recommend this game to Ghost of Tsushima fans who wanted more focus on face to face combat. They’re both great games, but Tsushima gives you a whole lot more on stealth, tools, and visuals while Rise of the Ronin is focused directly on combat.

As for people I would not recommend this to though, I would not suggest this game to people who play games for vibes and story. I realize I said it’s probably the best Team Ninja story, but it’s still a Team Ninja story and still as ass as you might expect.

Even if you’re a gameplay focused person, though being a Team Ninja game you’ll be sorting through trash loot a lot, and if that’s not your jam, then I get it too.

I hope that this review has helped you decide if this game is something you’d want to try! Lemme know in the comments if it did, or why it didn’t help. I always want to improve so please poke me about it so I know what else to include next time. I hope you’re having a fantastic day, and I’ll see you next time!